This week on the CFM blog, Aisha Shillingford, Artistic Director of Intelligent Mischief re-imagines museums as sites of repair, which she will further explore through an installation and learning lab at the 2026 AAM Annual Meeting & MuseumExpo.

Intelligent Mischief’s participation in the 2026 AAM Annual Meeting & MuseumExpo is generously supported by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation.

Italy’s Uffizi Galleries targeted in cyber-attack but deny security breach
from BBC, 4-3-26 [Trends]

The Uffizi Galleries in Florence have confirmed they were subject to a cyber-attack – but denied that the security systems protecting their famous works had been compromised. Italian newspaper Corriere della Sera reported that hackers had infiltrated the museums’ IT systems, allegedly extracting access codes, internal maps and the locations of CCTV cameras and alarms, before issuing a ransom demand. The attackers appeared to have moved through interconnected systems, computers and phones, gradually piecing together a detailed picture of the museum’s operations, Corriere reported. A ransom demand was later sent to museum director Simone Verde’s personal phone, the newspaper said, with a threat to sell the data on the dark web. Two floors of the Palazzo Pitti normally house the “Medici Treasure,” and Corriere claimed the hack had led to parts of the palace being closed since 3 February and valuable items being temporarily transferred to a vault of the Bank of Italy for safekeeping.

Be prepared: Ransomware attacks increased by 58% in 2025, and nonprofit targets have including the British Library, the Toronto Zoo, and several prominent US museums. Use the CFM post Is Your Museum Prepared for Ransomware? as a guide to preventing and preparing for ransomware attacks at your institution.

Hate crimes against Latinos and Sikhs hit record high in 2025
from Axios, 4-9-26 [Trends]

Anti-Latino and anti-Sikh hate crimes in the U.S. soared to new records in 2025, even as overall hate crimes declined, according to preliminary FBI data reviewed by Axios. Overall hate-crime incidents fell 11% in 2025 from the previous year. However, anti-Latino hate crimes rose 18% to a record 1,014 incidents in 2025. Anti-Sikh hate crimes shot up from 6 in 2015 to 228 last year — a 3,700% increase. [Researchers] cautioned that anti-Sikh hate crimes had just been introduced as a category at that time. Anti-Jewish hate crimes dropped 29%, a sharp annual drop. Despite a 6% dip, anti-trans hate crimes have remained on a sustained plateau — 98% above its 13-year average — amid a wave of anti-LGBTQ+ legislation. 2025 ranked as the 5th-highest year for hate crime in the 34-year history of FBI-collected police data.

Go deeper: Download the free AAM resource Audiences and Inclusion: A Primer for Cultivating More Inclusive Attitudes Among the Public to explore how museums can create safe and welcoming spaces for the most marginalized and at-risk communities and guide visitors towards more inclusive attitudes and behaviors that benefit society as a whole.

The museum as medical school training ground
from University of Minnesota Twin Cities, 3-31-26 [Museum Innovations]

The Weisman Art Museum, in partnership with the University of Minnesota Medical School’s Center for the Art of Medicine, will launch “Visual Art + Medicine 7753” this spring, a new course aimed at increasing the observational, interpretative and creative problem-solving skills of future physicians through hands-on art-making and guided gallery discussions. The course will include hands-on work with a ceramicist, where students use clay to slow down and learn through touch, alongside sound, abstraction, and color-based experiences that deepen listening skills and presence. Students and artists will use Visual Thinking Strategies (VTS), an approach originating with art museums. VTS uses facilitated discussions of art to build critical thinking, communication and visual literacy skills. The model reflects WAM’s broader commitment to hands-on learning — which has been shown to foster empathy, evidence-based interpretation and reflective practice — skills directly transferable to patient encounters.

Go deeper: AAM’s new toolkit, Museums and Healthcare: A Practical Guide to Partnership, provides a practical, research‑based guide to designing, managing, and evaluating cross‑sector partnerships such as

This week on the CFM blog, Elizabeth Merritt, VP of strategic foresight and founding director of CFM, shares 2026 AAM Annual Meeting & MuseumExpo sessions for attendees interested in AI, including one presented by Elizabeth herself.

Unbossing: Your Next Leaders Just Quit Before They Started
from Forbes, 4-6-26 [Trends]

Conscious unbossing is an emerging reality where people are rejecting middle management roles—a structural crisis hiding in plain sight. A report by a world-leading professional recruitment consultancy found that 52% of Gen Zers don’t want to be middle managers; 72% would rather opt for a career route that is focused on personal growth and skill development rather than taking on a management role. 62% of Gen Z think that middle management roles are too high stress for too low reward – citing longer hours, increased responsibility, increased risk taking, and little to no salary growth. [And these positions are at increasing risk,] in 2023, middle managers made up one-third of all layoffs, and in 2025, 41% of employees surveyed reported that their organizations had cut middle management layers. About half of those surveyed said they either have left or will be leaving their middle management role because of a lack of fulfillment or advancement.

Go deeper: This year’s TrendsWatch report examines how a growing aversion to management positions may contribute to a “looming leadership crisis” in our sector. Museum leaders might examine this data for how to make management roles more rewarding and sustainable.

After LA’s Devastating Fires, Local Art Spaces Unite for Climate Action
from Ocula, 3-10-26 [Museum Innovations]

More than a year since the wildfires that devastated Southern California, five Los Angeles art museums and galleries [have] signalled their commitment to climate action through the formation of a new consortium committed to implementing best practices from the Bizot Green Protocol, a set of recommendations tailored to arts organisations outlining environmentally sustainable practices and reducing carbon emissions in the long-term care of collections. In a joint statement, the consortium said: “Though not a direct cause, climate change was an exacerbating factor in the size and devastation of the recent Los Angeles-area fires, which took a toll on our cultural institutions, galleries and artists. Increasingly, the cultural sector is being shaped by and is responding to climate change as part of fulfilling our mission of caring for and exhibiting our shared cultural heritage. It is vital that our sector take action to both reduce our environmental impact and improve our resilience, so that we can continue to fulfill this mission.”

The People’s Role in American Democracy
from Gallup, March 2026 [Research]

The Kettering Foundation and Gallup have published the second The Democracy for All Project report, drawing from the views of more than 20,000 adults nationwide, examining citizen involvement, barriers to participation, the role of social media and information, and the impact of civic education. Only 25% of Americans say the people’s role in the democratic process is working well, while 37% say it is working poorly. Americans with both formal and informal civic education are more than twice as likely as those with little or no civic education to have volunteered in the past 12 months (42% vs. 20%, respectively). 74% of Americans report multiple barriers to getting involved in causes they care about. Americans who are struggling financially, younger adults and those with weak ties to their local community face the greatest barriers to participation.

Go deeper: A growing number of museums are fostering civic engagement, often through coalitions and programs such as Made By Us and Civic Season. How might your museum lower the barriers to civic participation?

This week on the CFM blog, Elizabeth Merritt, VP of strategic foresight and founding director of CFM, shares 2026 AAM Annual Meeting & MuseumExpo sessions for attendees who are looking to the future.

The Bizarre New Trend Sweeping U.S. Libraries: Readers Are Searching for Books That Don’t Even Exist
from Iowa Park Leader, 3-22-2026 [Trends]

Patrons are walking into American libraries asking for books that cannot be found, not because they are rare, but because they don’t exist. Fueled by generative AI, a wave of plausible-sounding but fabricated titles is sending staff on time-consuming chases, blurring the line between recommendation and hallucination. Librarians are becoming de facto detectives, piecing together clues across catalogs to separate the real from the unreal. Since late 2022, requests for these phantom books have surged, with a recent spike after AI-made summer reading lists appeared in several outlets, including the Chicago Sun-Times and the Philadelphia Inquirer. Some lists named fictitious titles by real authors, creating the perfect storm of credibility and confusion.

Exploring implications: How long before museum visitors/amateur researchers start asking museums for “original documents” that don’t exist? And how might fake AI content about museum collections impact museums’ “superpower of trust?”

It’s Equal Pay Day. Women have lost ground for the second year in a row
from NPR, 3-26-26 [Research]

Equal Pay Day marks how far into the new year women must work to make what men earned in the previous year. This year, it’s March 26, a day later than it was in 2025. That’s because for the second year in a row, the gender pay gap in the U.S. has widened. According to the most recent data from the Census Bureau, women working full-time, year-round, now earn 81 cents for every dollar men earn. That’s down from 83 cents a year ago, and 84 cents the year prior. It’s the first consecutive widening of the wage gap since the 1960s. While no single factor drives the wage gap, occupational segregation accounts for a large part of it. There are far more women than men doing low-wage work in restaurants, hotel housekeeping, and child care. Even within occupations, there are disparities. Studies have found male doctors earn higher wages than female doctors across all specialties.

Go deeper: There is considerable debate over whether or not the predominance of women in certain professions drives lower wages. That said, significant segments of the museum workforce (e.g., archivists, curators, technicians, and educators) are female and women directors are typically are paid less than men in equivalent positions. Raising awareness of gender-based pay disparities can help drive reform of systemin issues that perpetuate wage inequity.

World’s smallest QR code, smaller than bacteria, could store data for centuries
from ScienceDaily, 3-29-26 [Tools for the Future]

Scientists have created a microscopic QR code so tiny it can only be seen with an electron microscope—smaller than most bacteria and now officially a world record. The storage capacity is also impressive. More than 2 terabytes of data could fit within the area of a single A4 sheet of paper using this approach. Unlike conventional storage systems, these ceramic data carriers can remain intact indefinitely and do not require any energy to maintain the stored information. Magnetic and electronic storage devices often lose data after only a few years, especially without continuous power, cooling, and maintenance. Unlike modern data centers that require significant electricity and cooling, ceramic-based storage can preserve information without any ongoing energy input, helping reduce environmental impact. By engraving data into ultra-stable ceramic materials, the team has opened the door to storing information that could last for centuries or even millennia without needing power or maintenance.

Food for thought: As one author of this paper points out, “”We live in the information age, yet we store our knowledge in media that are astonishingly short-lived.” How might emerging technologies like ceramic nano-QR codes help museums ensure that information is preserved for the long term?

This week on the CFM blog, Kimberly Bender, former executive director of the Heurich House Museum, shares ten tips around succession planning learned from her own leadership transition.

Design insights from studying the Van Gogh Museum
from MIT Sloane School of Management, 3-10-26 [Research]

“Museum fatigue” — physical and cognitive fatigue that causes a sharp drop in visitor attention — has been extensively studied and documented, and yet it has rarely been examined using large-scale behavioral data. Using data from the [Van Gogh] museum’s multimedia guided tours, MIT Sloan assistant professor Ali Aouad, PhD ’17, analyzed visitor pathways to elucidate how physical and digital spaces are associated with differences in engagement. In particular, the research showed that although visitors often deviate from the curated path, museum design choices — including the arrangement of artworks and the spatial layout — can help explain observed patterns in visitor behavior. And, counterintuitively, moderate congestion was associated with higher levels of engagement. Identifying when fatigue begins allows curators to think creatively about ways that strategic and well-planned design might sustain engagement for a longer time.

Detroit’s African American museum says fed, state funds drying up
from The Detroit News, 3-13-26 [Trends]

The Charles H. Wright Museum of African American History is seeking $11 million in city government funding due to an “extremely challenging” financial climate. The cultural institution is one of the largest and oldest African American museums in the world. Changes in federal funding during the Trump administration and the recent halt in state funding have resulted in the loss of millions that the city-owned museum counted on in previous years. Another challenge is that a proposed millage vote, which the museum has sought for years to pursue, is trapped in a partisan legal fight. The Wright and many other cultural institutions have lost funding during [the] Trump administration, which has moved to eliminate diversity, equity and inclusion programs wherever it can. [Neil Barclay, the museum’s president and CEO] said new federal rules for grants are “making it challenging, if not impossible, for African American museums, and indeed all museums of a color to apply,” he said.

Leaders Face Disruption With Resilience and Resolve, Poll Finds
from The Chronicle of Philanthropy, 2-3-26 [Research]

A new survey of more than 350 nonprofit and foundation leaders finds that 97 percent of nonprofit leaders and 87 percent of foundation leaders say their environment is becoming more challenging. 36 percent of nonprofit leaders surveyed said they were somewhat or very concerned that their organizations may not exist or may be diminished in scope over the next five years. Fully 70 percent of nonprofit leaders and 60 percent of foundation leaders say they are concerned about the likelihood of increased burnout, retirement, and voluntary departures of staff members in the next year. Already, 43 percent of nonprofit leaders say they have seen an increase in such staff losses in the past year. Over all, 45 percent of nonprofits said some of their federal funding in 2025 had been canceled or not renewed. Within this group of affected nonprofits, one-quarter said this loss of support had a major impact. Another 70 percent said it had a moderate or mild impact. Only 4 percent dismissed their loss of federal funding as having “no real impact.”

The Center for the Future of Museums Blog shares musings on the future of museums and society, where you’ll read posts authored by CFM director Elizabeth Merritt and guest author posts. If you have a story to share, email us at futureofmuseums [at] aam-us [dot] org.

Explore more resources from the Center for the Future of Museums in the AAM Resource Library.

The new annual TrendsWatch report has been released as the January/February 2026 issue of Museum magazine for AAM members and subscribers. Get a free preview here. It will be available as a free PDF report later this spring.

Dispatches shares summaries of recent news stories illuminating trends and events shaping society, technology, economics, the environment, and policy today. Fuel your museum’s strategic foresight by thinking about the implications of these “signals,” and the kinds of future they might create.

The most frequent categories that you’ll see articles filed under include: Tools for the Future, Museum Innovations, Projects, Trends, and Research.

The Dispatches roundup published as a webpage began in January 2026 and will contain the most recent 5 weeks of news roundups.

In February, we made available an archive of contents older than 5 weeks (from January 2026 onward).

From October 2009 through December 2025, Dispatches was sent as a weekly newsletter from our Center for the Future of Museums. In that time, it grew to be an invaluable resource for over 40,000 subscribers!

In recent years, AAM has also sent other in-depth weekly newsletters: Aviso with news and opportunities to AAM members, and Field Notes, a newsletter we began several years ago with stories and insights for museum people which was free to subscribe.

Readers told us they wanted to receive fewer weekly newsletters from AAM. By consolidating content and moving Dispatches stories to the web, we can ensure that just one weekly newsletter hits your inbox.

Join Museum Junction’s Center for the Future of Museums Community, where you can join in the conversation about Dispatches and other future of museums topics!

It’s free to join. If you already have a membership or an AAM profile, you can use that to log in to Museum Junction without creating a new profile.

Here’s how to get started:

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By joining the community, you can also choose to receive automatic email digests with updates, such as posts from CFM director Elizabeth Merritt with new Dispatches contents. See the next question on how to edit your Museum Junction digest settings.

If you haven’t already, join the Center for the Future of Museums Community on AAM’s free online forum, Museum Junction! See previous question.

To check that you are receiving automatic email digests from the CFM community, or edit your settings:

Visit your Community Notifications (also found under “My Profile” > under “My Account Tab” > “Community Notifications”). Here you can choose to designate an “override” email address if you want your digest emails to another inbox other than your default email. The Communities you have joined are listed there, under Notification Settings.

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